It might be interesting to see the effort. The whole tone of Alexander’s fantasy is one of vagueness, ineffableness, incomprehending awe — he talks about seeing indescribable beings like birds or angels that he can’t do justice to in words, for instance…I don’t think crisp CGI is exactly going to work in his favor.

I’m still pissed off about the latest episode of Bones. Here we had a perfectly good atheist character who has an NDE which she knew that was just a dream except that the writers included proof that she had actually met and talked to her dead mother.
ARRGGGHHH!!!

I’ve heard this guy talk about his experience of ‘dying’, on the radio. It was very convincing, to the credulous. And of course, before his NDE, he’d been an atheist. (I guess that shows he’s a liar for Jebus.)

Not to worry. Hollywood rarely cares about the original work beyond title and author’s name, and even that’s up for grabs. “Based on a true story…” is Hollywood speak for “we made it up.” Similar to the “true stories” in the bibles. I’m sure they’ll do fine. Who knows, perhaps they can fit in a car chase scene or two.

Why does the guy reporting this rumor think it’s an “interesting angle” that the doctor didn’t believe before his coma? Humans fall for a lot of baloney on a lot less pretext than misunderstanding their mental rambling while on the edge of death. I’ve been told that flip-flopping is quite common among humans anyway, not just politicians.

…If they chained me to a director’s seat and forced me to direct it, I suppose I’d have snippets of it voiced over relevant actions in the plot. (I haven’t read the book, so feel free to ridicule my naive assumption there is a plot.) …On second thought, I’d consider gnawing off my limbs to escape. On third thought, I’d try to make it a subtle parody. On fourth thought, I’d reconsider gnawing my limbs off, since I doubt the Randroids would catch onto the parody and question their dogma.

Let me guess, he floated above his body and saw a clock with his time of death. *yawn*

wrong.
wake up.

A quote from the good doctor:

Higher than the clouds—immeasurably higher—flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamerlike lines behind them.
Birds? Angels? These words registered later, when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms.

See? 2001.

Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

I have a question for those who are smarter and more knowledgeable than me (reading, PZ?): What the fuck is wrong with surgeons?

Beyond Alexander, there’s Ben Carson, undoubtedly a gifted and celebrated surgeon who’s also a moron of the highest order. He was on NPR’s “On Point” (http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/02/26/dr-ben-carson) yesterday and he could not have been more incoherent and stupid. For instance, on Evolution, he neither gets it (“never seen a species turn into another species”) nor accepts it.

He spouted some other nonsense about his views not being conservative but beyond labels and simply common sense (they were common but hardly sensible) and he seems to think that the biggest problem we face today is political correctness — what the fuck does that even mean? It sounds like he wants to say sexist and homophobic things and not be criticized because that would be political correctness.

Here’s my question: Can you be stupid and smart at the same time? How do you become an accomplished professional in a challenging filed like surgery and be stupid about everything else? Is surgery like carpentry, a skill that does not imply superior intellectual prowess (with all due respect to carpenters, for whom I have the utmost respect)? I’m really perplexed about this.

One time when I was in college in the 1980s I had a dream that I knew the answer to all the mysteries of the universe. Honest! So I had a pad and pen next to me just in case I had the dream again. I did! And I even woke up enough to write the answer down. I was a single word, “Alfani” which at that time meant nothing to me but I have come to now realize it is a Macy’s clothing brand my son favors because of the slim cut and fitted shirts — unfortunately I’m rather more substantial than my son and Alfani shirts look ludicrous on me.

You think I’m joking but I’m honestly recounting my experience. Do I take it seriously? Of course not. The tired brain of a college student can come up with all sorts of nonsense, just like the brain of a surgeon that’s under the influence of narcotics and probably suffering from hypoxia.

The difference between Alexander and me is that after I woke up I was lucid enough to have a good laugh and I remain lucid enough to know that Alfani shirts won’t solve even minor sartorial conundra, let alone the mysteries of the universe.

Nothing effs up the ineffable like trying to make it look real–Ang Lee partially exempted. It exists at all because it exists in a mind, where it is safely guarded from the disinfecting sunlight. Take it out, turn it around, hold it up, and now all the seams of absurdity and cracks of implausability start to show.

I’m going to commit heresy here and say that I thought that, for what it was, “The Passion of the Christ” was a damned fine movie. Its only serious flaws came out when trying to show the supernatural. My favorite scene being one of Lucifer in the underworld looking up “Wrath of Kahn” style when he realizes that that wascally savior has defeated him. The best supernatural effect? An exceedingly subtle view of a risen Jesus–a glimpse of pierced hand and little more.

So by all means, exploitative jackals. Bring on the CGI, put it in 3D and Imax. Nothing makes the supernatural look as phony as it really is quite like trying to portray it as you really believe it to be.

The whole tone of Alexander’s fantasy is one of vagueness, ineffableness, incomprehending awe

I assume Damon Lindelof has been pulled to write the script, and true to form (both for Lindelof and this book) the movie will end having asked far more questions than it tries, or even knows how, to answer.

Stonybrook… the same institution Douglas Futuyma, who wrote the most used textbook on evolutionary biology on the planet, is from. boggles the mind sometimes.

still, I compare MD/surgeons to “biology” like one would compare “engineer” to “physics”. surgeons, like engineers, tend to only focus on the mechanics of things. Not saying that some don’t go on ahead to examine the underlying principles to what they do, but a LOT don’t, because they simply don’t need to.

This of course, leads to the ability to highly compartmentalize some really stupid shit.

Damn, Ichthyic @43 beat me to it. Agreed: I figure docs are another candidate profession for the Salem Hypothesis — not actually scientists (except to the extent that some of them get in to the research end of the field), but practitioners of a science-based art, which is close enough for some of them to fool themselves (and others) into mistaking them for such, and enabling them to blather authoritatively on subjects considerably beyond their actual expertise. Add in the social prestige that comes from being well-remunerated, and you have the ingredients for an authority figure.

Hollywood has a long history of making shit movies and messing up good stories with bull shit additions and complete re-writes.
They also try to “cash in” on perceived trends in popular culture.
they also have a very successful history of making box-office flops.
the first thing this idea brought to mind was “The Producers” only for real
Now if they dispense with dialog of any kind and go for more abstracted images with lots of fades
and go for a score by Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Pink Floyd it might be good

I once had several dreams in a row where I learned to fly, or possibly levitate. Maybe I should write a book…
.
OK, so Heaven is a very large version of the Fortress Of Solitude. With flying relatives of Kal-El soaring above. It would be more original if it was a construct inside information space, like the Matrix.
Philip Jose Farmer noted it would take the surface of a whole planet (To Your Scattered Bodies Go) to house just the adult dead. Since those who died in infancy far outnumbered them, they had been raised on a separate world after resurrection.

“Mighty few people that you and I will ever get a chance to see, Captain. Not a solitary commoner ever has the luck to see a reception of a prophet, I can tell you. All the nobility, and all the patriarchs and prophets—every last one of them—and all the archangels, and all the princes and governors and viceroys, were there,—and no small fry—not a single one. And mind you, I’m not talking about only the grandees from our world, but the princes and patriarchs and so on from all the worlds that shine in our sky, and from billions more that belong in systems upon systems away outside of the one our sun is in. There were some prophets and patriarchs there that ours ain’t a circumstance to, for rank and illustriousness and all that. Some were from Jupiter and other worlds in our own system, but the most celebrated were three poets, Saa, Bo and Soof, from great planets in three different and very remote systems.

The worst thing this film could do is treat Alexander’s views with reverence, which is exactly what I expect will happen.
The late British film maker Derek Jarman made one film with no picture (a solid blue screen) & a soundtrack, and another with images & no soundtrack. A worthwhile movie about heaven would combine these two approaches, resulting in no picture and no soundtrack. We can’t expect Universal to be that daring, sadly.

Mark Twain writes about the insane crowds (you can’t even see the Big Stars) that show up whenever there’s an apostle putting in an appearance somewhere…

This takes a little more thought….it looks wrong to me.
Because there is eternity ahead, and only a finite number of prophet-groupies, all you have to do to see one is wait your turn. Because of the infinite time ahead, you can even spend an infinite amount of time with your selected prophet.
How you handle the situation where the guy in line ahead of you wants to spend an infinite amount of time with your prophet, this I don’t know. Cloning?

She was also a Christian Scientist. She died at the age of 44 because she refused medical care for spinal meningitis.

How do you become an accomplished professional in a challenging filed like surgery and be stupid about everything else? Is surgery like carpentry, a skill that does not imply superior intellectual prowess (with all due respect to carpenters, for whom I have the utmost respect)? I’m really perplexed about this.

Surgeons are known for being…single minded. Remarkably bright in some areas and dim in others.

Case in point: Harriet Hall. She’s not a stupid woman.

People: Do not underestimate the human capacity for compartmentalization.